Dribblings and ramblings of a semi-professional railway worker and gunzel type.

WANDERINGS OF A GUNZEL......AIYAHHHHHHHHHH

Yes, the odd rambling from a semi-dysfunctional railway type, both as a professionial-at times debatable...and as a hobby..No perversions mind, only good honest blokey hornbags allowed! After years of travelling in many parts of Asia, any sensible fellow knows, and understands, that they are world's best women! And not to mention some trains of course! These articles come about in a highly sporadic fashion, due to some unpleasent aspersions being cast between the railway hobby, and offences against the underaged.Not to mention a scent of doom laden prophecy, that the world as we know it shall shortly endure! Surely mankind can no longer be allowed to continue it's excesses of greed and consumption on the face of the planet, and nature shall judge us by our actions. The law of cause and effect is being sown with devestating consequences!Ha!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Lets hope that global warming does not cause hornbag shrinkage. However it is allready being experienced here. Before there was three hornbags, by the time this photograph was sauced there was two. More proof that global warming is indeed at work in our daily lives, and, er hornbag photography.

Fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study has found.

"It's huge," said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France.

"Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity - the capacity to reproduce."

Smaller fish tend to produce fewer eggs. They also provide less sustenance for predators - including humans - which could have significant implications for the food chain and ecosystem.

A similar shrinking effect was recently documented in Scottish sheep and Mr Daufresne said it is possible that global warming could have "a significant impact on organisms in general."

Earlier research has already established that fish have shifted their geographic ranges and their migratory and breeding patters in response to rising water temperatures. It has also been established that warmer regions tend to be inhabited by smaller fish.

Mr Daufresne and his colleagues examined long-term surveys of fish populations in rivers, streams and the Baltic and North Seas and also performed experiments on bacteria and plankton.

They found the individual species lost an average of 50 per cent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 per cent.

This was a result of a decrease in the average size-at-age and an increase in the proportion of juveniles and small-sized species, Mr Daufresne said.

"It was an effect that we observed in a number of organisms and in a number of very different environments - on fish, on plankton, on bacteria, in fresh water, in salt water - and we observed a global shrinking of size for all the organisms in all the environments," he said.

While commercial and recreational fishing did impact some of the fisheries studied, it "cannot be considered as the unique trigger" for the changes in size, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.

"Although not negating the role of other factors, our study provides strong evidence that temperature actually plays a major role in driving changes in the size structure of populations and communities," the study concluded.